


Things that feel like home

by lytefoot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cute Vignette, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, self-indulgent twaddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14969798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lytefoot/pseuds/lytefoot
Summary: Harry comes back from a field mission and settles into domestic life.(Takes place near Christmas 2013)





	Things that feel like home

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of an excerpt from the middle of a much longer thing, but this bit kind of stands alone, and as I've never actually finished any longer thing, I thought I might try sharing little bits instead.

It was, in fact, the middle of Sunday afternoon by the time Harry made it actually home. He’d stopped at the Ministry first, made sure the arrest was properly official and that Grant was resting comfortably in the Aurors’ ward at St. Mungo’s. While he was at the department, he had the medic fix his nose and the gash on his shoulder, got a shower and clean clothes. Somehow, he could never get out of Cornwall without crawling through some sort of muddy cave or tunnel or other hole in the ground—it had been tunnels this time. And the kids were now old enough to understand that “it’s mostly not mine” wasn’t a reassuring answer to the question, “is that blood?” (This time, the blood was mostly Grant’s, but Grant was going to be fine, too. There was a reason Aurors wore red robes.)

The first one to hit him when he walked in the door was Teddy, who’d been waiting on the front hall steps. Teddy shouted “Harry’s home!” to the house in general and launched at Harry, grabbed him in a hard hug that made him glad he’d fixed his shoulder first. Teddy had gotten tall, this last year or so; Harry thought he might be visibly taller than he’d been at start of term. He’d forgotten that Christmas break was starting already, was glad Ginny had managed to pick Teddy up at the station on Saturday.

“Look at you.” Because yes, he was definitely taller, and and maybe the shape of his face was a little older, too. And he’d gotten two more ear piercings at some point, now had three of them making their way up his right ear. As he got older, Teddy looked more and more like his father… and a little like Sirius, but that was the Black lineage from his mother’s side. “Sorry I wasn’t there to pick you up.”

Teddy shrugged, gave Harry a _look_. “Is the world safe yet?”

“Still working on it, puffskein. Safer. Where’s everyone?”

“Tree trimming. Must have gotten loud if they didn’t hear me. I decided to get out of the way when Al and James got into it.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be able to handle that sort of thing now? Isn’t that a prefect’s job?” Harry had teased him mercilessly about making prefect, and Ron and Percy had sent him very similar pompous notes of congratulation—with only Ron’s being entirely facetious. They were all intensely proud of him.

“No no no, you don’t understand,” he countered, following Harry up the stairs, “I’m a _Hufflepuff_ prefect. Anything to do with James is way above my pay grade. He’s Dante Shafiq’s problem, not mine. If you need help finding your homework or just found out you’re allergic to nifflers, I’m your man.”

Harry laughed at that, too. Teddy had been a little upset about Hufflepuff, at first, having spent so much time surrounded by Weasleys, but Harry and Andromeda had sat him down and talked about his mum and his grandfather and Cedric Diggory, and he’d come around. It was nice to hear him able to make the jokes, now, especially the _unmanageable Gryffindor hellions_ ones.

Opening the door to the back sitting room, he had to admit Teddy had a point. Ornaments were everywhere, but mostly not on the tree. Lily was, just at that moment, in the process of turning a somersault off the sofa, which Harry caught before he’d quite had a chance to register what he was seeing, picked her up. And Ginny was on her knees on the floor, trying to explain to two contrite-looking little boys that yes, your brother shouldn’t boss you around, and yes, your brother shouldn’t call you names, but punching is never okay, and biting is never, ever okay, and it’s important oh, look, dad’s home!

They launched themselves at him, quarrel forgotten, and it was immensely good to be home.

Ultimately, Harry and Teddy did much of the actual tree-trimming, with assistance from an enthusiastic but random Lily; interference from James and Albus, who insisted on taking ornaments back off and rearranging them; and ongoing color commentary from Ginny, who had her feet up on the sofa like one taking a well-deserved break. Harry, who hadn’t in fact slept since Friday, would have been annoyed by that, but he’d had a few rounds of solo parenting the three Potter children, so he understood completely. Once the general plan of the tree was laid down, he left Teddy to manage it, joined her on the sofa; she inched back so he could curl up against her, wrapped an arm around him. “You could have invited Ron over,” he observed. “Two against five is better odds, and Hugo tends to mellow Lily a little.”

“I had it handled, don’t worry. They were just worried about you. They’re fine now.”

They really were. James and Albus were still rearranging each other’s work, but the net affect really was a steadily increasing number of ornaments on the tree and a decreasing number on the floor. Lily wanted to decorate the top of the tree, so Teddy was spending a lot of time picking her up. “We really do make adorable babies,” Harry observed, tiredly. He yawned. “We should have another one.”

Ginny laughed, hit him with a throw pillow. “I told you when Lily was born. The only way you’re getting another one is if _you_ have it, ‘cause I’m done.”

Harry sighed. “I can barely guarantee enough uninterrupted time off to _make_ one.”

“No more babies,” she told him firmly, and then stopped talking for a while.

Her arm around him was still lovely, her warmth against his back infinitely relaxing. He definitely wasn’t going to fall asleep, not with all this noise, not at ten in the morning. He definitely fell asleep.

He woke up when Ginny whispered, “Shh, dad’s sleeping,” across him to the boys. He woke up when she tried to inch her way off the sofa without waking him. He woke up when Teddy came back some time later with a blanket and tucked him in. And he definitely woke up when Lily sneaked in with her bear and tucked it under his arm. But he pretended to sleep through all those things and fell back asleep very quickly, because he was home and warm and safe and all those things told him so.

He did wake up for real when Teddy came and shook his shoulder, said, “Ginny says if you don’t wake up now you won’t sleep all night, and you’d better get your tail downstairs so she can feed you.”

The light outside the windows was already going dim, but that didn’t mean much about the time of day in December in London. According to his watch, it was half three. “That’s probably fair.” He levered himself up, wondered again why it took a few hours’ sleep before he really noticed how tired and sore he actually was. “Sorry about that.”

Teddy hit him with the throw pillow, too. “Don’t,” he ordered. “Sheesh, Harry. Come down and have a sandwich.”

“Hey.” Harry hugged him around the shoulders. “ _You_ don’t have to mother me, all right?”

“I’m not, I’m just passing along Ginny’s scolding.”

Harry was slightly under the impression that Ginny sometimes made up meals, because she insisted on feeding him a proper sit-down meal whenever he came back from the field. Afternoon tea was at least a thing, though he suspected that Ginny’s ham sandwiches were rather more substantial than the standard; on the other hand, he was almost certain she’d made up elevenses. He sometimes wondered if she knew how much he appreciated that. Usually, he was sure she did.

The kids were used to this sort of thing—it happened once a month or so, even with Harry very carefully judging what he had to go out for personally. He’d put his foot down when James was born; before that, he’d belonged to the Aurors’ office pretty much all the time. ‘Savior of the wizarding world’ was not a job with well-structured hours.

Lily sounded exactly like her mother when she said, crossly, “Stop brooding and eat your sandwich, daddy,” which brought a laugh from the entire family.

Harry shook his finger at her. “ _You_ don’t mother me, either, young lady.” But he did stop brooding and eat his sandwich, so there was that.


End file.
